


Sherbert Lemons and Chocolate Frogs

by CynicalRainbows



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-07-12 08:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19943218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicalRainbows/pseuds/CynicalRainbows
Summary: This began as a one-line response to a post by @incorrectgentlemanjackquotes, then....grew.The Ann(e)'s at Hogwarts.A collection of one-shots.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a one-line response to a post by @incorrectgentlemanjackquotes, then....grew.
> 
> I am still continuing A Question of Sincerity, for anyone who was reading it- chapter 4 is in the works- but I wanted to post this too.
> 
> The absolute shower of lovely, lovely kind comments I've had for A Question over the last couple of weeks have cleared my skin, watered my crops and brought peace to the Valley.

Anne is twelve years old when, freshly expelled from Beauxbatons and fuming at being forced to repeat a year of school like a CHILD, she steps onto Platform 9 and ¾ for the first time.

She’s taken herself to London- she’s done it before, often (and she’s quite pleased that Marian won’t be there to whine and fuss and cry like the irritating younger sister that she is).

She isn’t afraid.

She finds herself a spot against a pillar and watches carefully to see how the more practised students access the barrier, before she attempts it herself.

(She knows she will do it perfectly and she does.)

On the platform, she stands alone and watches the waves of children and parents ebb and flow around her.

Most of them have pets, and some have pets that aren’t mentioned in the prospectus- but she doesn’t see any dogs yet.

(She hopes Argus won’t feel lonely.)

She’s already rehearsed over and over exactly how she will swear on the lives of every family member she has (and maybe twice on Marian) that Argus is merely an ugly looking cat if anyone tries to question his presence…. But so far, no one does.

Perhaps it’s that no one has noticed, or perhaps it’s the fact that he sits at the feet of a girl who looks (most privately think) far more calm and self possessed than any first year has a right to be on their first day.

*  
Ann is brought to London by several of her numerous and elderly relatives.

She has Elizabeth’s company on the journey too, but the minute they enter Kings Cross, her sister is surrounded by a crowd of friends and swept away- she just about has time to squeeze Ann’s hand and whisper that she’ll find her later during the feast and then she’s gone.

Ann is left with the assortment of Aunts and Uncles that help make up the hoarde she now has in the place of actual parents- and they all seem to know everybody.

There is a lot of exclaiming over how quickly the year has past, over how much growing all the children have been doing, much mentioning of the fact that Elizabeth is a prefect now, and lots of talk about how much Ann has to live up to and how she’ll soon be like her sister, like her cousins- a pillar of the school.  
Hovering at the edge of the group, Ann doesn’t feel particularly like a pillar of anything.  
Her stomach is twisted with anxiety and everything is so loud that she wants to cover her ears.  
So many people, so many faces. 

She doesn’t exactly enjoy the silence of Crow Nest during the endless terms that Elizabeth is away, but she definitely doesn’t like the noise of the platform.

(If only Catherine was coming to Hogwarts too! But Catherine had chosen Beauxbatons, and has already twice sent Ann owls addressed to ‘Ma Chere Ann’.)

She’s scared- but her sister has told her to be brave (and also extracted the specific promise that she not cry no matter what), so she bites her lip and blinks and wonders if she’ll make any friends at Hogwarts. 

(She hopes so.)

Her sister- and Aunts and Uncles and cousins- have all advised her to choose who she sits with on the train carefully, because people you meet on your first trip on the Express can set the tone for your whole school experience…. But what is Ann to do when it doesn’t look like anyone actually wants to sit with her?

Everyone she sees is either older than her, or busy with their own friends or parents- some of the First Years look excited, some look nervous. 

None of them seem terribly approachable- she just knows she’d be an unwelcome intrusion on either their fun or their anxiety. 

‘Oh Theodore would be happy for Ann to join his friends in their compartment-’ A voice from the aunt-huddle drifts over to her and she looks up quickly- it seems that she’s been remiss in not making any apparent effort to talk to anyone yet and her relatives are going to choose her new friends for her (just like they choose everything else).

(Theodore does not seen to share his mother’s enthusiasm at the prospect).

As much as Ann doesn’t want to be utterly friendless, she absolutely cannot bear the humiliation of being foisted off, unwanted, on a strange boy- she’d rather sit alone…. Or at least be rejected by someone she has chosen to talk to herself.

Not that there is anyo-

Then she spots a girl standing by herself on the other side of the platform, scratching the ears of the definitely-not-regulation dog at her feet and giving everyone a look that challenges them to make something of it. 

The stripe on her tie gives away the fact that she’s a first year too but she doesn’t look like one- she looks like she’s deciding whether or not to grace Hogwarts with her presence. She doesn’t look afraid- she looks interesting.

Ann isn’t impulsive usually but she’s impulsive then- she darts away from her Aunts and Uncles and hurries across the platform. She has to dodge around quite a lot of groups of students and narrowly avoids being run over by a trolley- the owl on it hoots in reproach- before she makes it to the girl.

As a consequence, she’s a tiny bit flustered by the time she’s actually standing in front of her.

*  
‘Hello!’

The girl who has just appeared looks so happy to see Anne that for a minute she wonders if she knows her- but no. She doesn’t know anyone yet.

‘Hello?’

The smile falters a little- she twists her fingers nervously.

‘Hello- sorry, I said that already… I don’t know you but you were standing on your own and I was- and- and I just- I wanted to ask if- ifyouweresittingwithanyoneonthetrainyet’ She finishes in a rush.

Anne is a little taken aback by being accosted in such a fashion- and by such a person as this. This girl doesn’t look old enough to come to Hogwarts for one thing, it’s only her robes that mark her out as a pupil.

She also hasn’t really thought about who to share a compartment with- she had planned to take stock of the other students first. 

This girl- impetuous and shy all at once, with the sort of perfect golden curls more commonly seen on antique dolls- isn’t really the sort she’d envisaged as being her first friend at Hogwarts. 

Except….

Anne has to admit to being just the tiniest bit impressed by her tenacity- she doesn’t look like the sort to just march up to people and offer friendship usually, and doing so on the first day of school in such a public place without even the buffer of a friend or parent if Anne had turned her down…. well, it must have taken some courage.

(And the fact that she looks so very eager about the prospect of just sitting with Anne is more than a little flattering. The girl is positively glowing.)  
(She has a nice smile.)

And so she nods, with a casual ‘Why not?’, and the girl beams.

(She could, she figures, do a lot worse.)

*  
(Ann is the happiest she’s ever been.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hogwarts Express.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh goodness thank you for all the lovely comments so quickly!  
> (Have another chapter in gratitude!)

Once the train is actually moving, Ann realises she needn’t have worried about having to sit alone- the compartments fill up quickly, and the new first years find themselves herding together like anxious sheep.

Once everyone is settled into their respective seats, she and Anne find themselves squashed in between a boy who is trying to teach his puffskein to roll on command and a girl who is trying to work out what house everyone will be in based on their star sign. 

(Anne scoffs that it’s all nonsense but Ann is quietly intrigued, and tells the girl her birthday quite willingly.)

‘Oooh a May birthday- you’re-’

‘Taurus’ says Anne, jumping in before the girl can say finish (apparently her disdain for the zodiac does not preclude her having learnt the dates of the signs). 

‘The bull’. The girl glowers at them both.

Ann isn’t entirely sure she wants to be a bull-  _ why can’t she have one of the pretty ones? _ : it rather sounds like the sign for fighting and arguing, neither of which she is very (or at all) good at. 

‘Is Taurus really a bull?’

‘Taurus’s are loyal.’ Anne has noticed her discomfort. ‘Not that I believe in it or anything. But they are. And calm and patient. And responsible.’

‘And stubborn,’ says the girl sourly, as if she blames Ann for her being upstaged, and Ann wonders if there’s more to the zodiac than Anne seems to think because actually, she  _ does  _ get chided a lot at home for being stubborn, even if (in her opinion) she doesn’t really disagree with people a lot.

(But when she does, Elizabeth likes to say, you could wait a hundred thousand million years before she’ll change her mind. The aunts and uncles are still waiting for her to change her mind about her refusal to return to dancing class and her insistence that she does not want to go to tea with ‘the nice children next door’ ever again.)

Anne just grins. ‘And stubborn’ she agrees, and somehow, she manages to imbue the word with a whole new meaning: Anne makes it sound like being stubborn is something you  _ want _ to be.

‘Loyalty means you’ll be in Hufflepuff’ pipes up the boy (his puffskein having retreated to his anorak hood). ‘Loyal people go to Hufflepuff.’

‘Stupid people go to Hufflepuff’ retorts a boy with glasses. ‘People without anything interesting about them. Clever people go to Ravenclaw, and brave people go to Gryffindor and evil people go to Slytherin-’

‘That’s ridiculous’ Anne interrupts decisively ‘Why would you have a house for  _ evil  _ people?’

The boy shrugs. ‘Dunno. But they do. Everyone knows it.’

‘That’s true’ chips in the zodiac girl, looking pleased at the opportunity to score a point ‘They put you into slytherin if you seem like you might be evil because they need to watch you and check you don’t DO anything….’

‘But that makes no sense at all!’ Ann had wondered at first if perhaps Anne’s family has a tradition of being sorted into Slytherin but no- it appears it’s not the scapegoating that bothers her as much as the lack of  _ logic  _ in the situation. ‘Wouldn’t that make you  _ more  _ likely to be evil, if you’re all together? Why not spread everybody out-  _ dilute  _ the evil?’ Blank, puzzled faces stare back and she sighs. ‘It’s all nonsense. I’m going to have to find out more about it before we get there.’

And saying that, she scrabbles into her bag for a book, opens it and begins to flick through as if she isn’t sitting in the middle of a compartment of people- all of whom are staring at her.

After a moment, she glances up.

‘ _ What?’  _ she almost spits at them- and Ann finds herself hoping she never ends up on Anne’s bad side (she isn’t sure she’s on her good side yet- but she’d like to be. And until then, she’ll settle for not being on her bad side.)

‘What are you doing?’ asks the bespectacled boy, in a tone that’s edging dangerously close to a sneer.

‘Crocheting a hat, what does it look like?’ Anne snaps ‘How else am I going to choose the right house if I don’t know enough about them to pick?’

There’s another slightly confused silence.

‘You...don’t  _ choose’  _ ventures the boy with the puffskein patiently, as if explaining something simple to a child. ‘You get  _ sorted.’ _

‘The  _ hat  _ chooses’ adds the boy (his hood now emitting quiet chirrups).

The zodiac girls sniggers. ‘Everyone knows about the hat- I can’t believe you’ve never heard of it!’

‘Of course I’ve heard of it-’ Anne replies witheringly ‘And all I can say is, if you’re just going to let it  _ fling _ you wherever it wants, without even  _ trying _ to have some say in it…. As if I’d let some  _ hat  _ decide who I was!’

They look at her as if she were mad- but Ann finds the idea quite comforting: she’s been tormented many nights over the prospect of The Sorting and how disappointed her family will be if she ends up in the Wrong House (although coming from different houses themselves- and indeed, different schools- they lack a unified idea of what constitutes Wrong exactly)... sorting has always been presented to her as a thing that happens  _ to _ you.

The idea that it’s something you can have some say in makes her feel less anxious about the whole thing- could it really be so simple as just  _ asking  _ for the house you want (not that she’s at all sure which house she  _ does  _ want.)

Anne goes back to her page, but glances up, annoyed, at the giggles begin again.

‘Yes I’m  _ reading  _ on a  _ train _ ’ she eventually snaps ‘So what, it’s not  _ illegal!’ _

For all that Anne’s bravado screams of not caring what they all think, Ann wonders if perhaps she really does- a bit- and all at once, she can’t stand that they’re being like this to her, that they don’t care two pins for anything about Anne other than that she’s (interesting)  _ different. _

‘I think it’s sensible to know something real about the houses before we start’ she hears herself saying ‘What does it say about Ravenclaw?’

Her own voice is surprisingly loud in the carriage- she realises that it’s nearly the first thing she’s said, apart from shyly asking the boy the name of his puffskein and accepting an Every Flavour Bean (plum pudding).

Anne shoots her a look that is surprised but gratified and turns to the index page to hunt for the R section.

(In the boys hood, the puffskein is purring.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ann Walker's birthday was May 20th which is a Taurus.  
> Plum pudding was something the real life Ann(e)s had on their anniversary to celebrate.


	3. Chapter 3

In some ways, Anne finds that she is happier at Hogwarts than she was at Beauxbatons, and it’s during her third week that she makes the mistake of actually voicing this thought aloud in the presence of some of her classmates: she had thought it a compliment, albeit a slightly lukewarm one, but apparently, at Hogwarts, anything less than utter devotion to one’s school is considered to be nothing short of absolute heresy

She finds the whole thing a little hard to take seriously.

Really, how enthused can one be expected to get over a school that seems to go out of its way to create an at best confusing and at times outright hostile environment for ~~Ann~~ it’s younger students? 

(She had actually found the changing staircases rather amusing at first- she had wondered if the library had a section on the architecture needed to make something like that- but when Ann had come late and red-eyed to dinner for the third time and tearfully asked whether Anne thought she’d be expelled if she kept arriving late to lessons after being forced to take unexpected detours- they’d started to seem more like a cruel trick than the delightly display of whimsy they’d been intended as.)

She argues her case- she feels- fairly well **,** but it doesn’t make her any more popular, especially when she gives a black eye to the third-year Gryffindor boy who had attempted to _persuade_ her of Hogwarts superiority as an educational establishment by force.

They (surprisingly) don’t succeed in changing her opinion that while she is happier (Hogwarts puts far less emphasis on decorum and deportment than Beauxbatons, and for that she is eternally grateful- she never quite got the hang of curtseying), it doesn’t change the fact that Hogwarts falls _woefully_ behind Beauxbatons in some areas.

Extracurriculars for example- at Hogwarts, it seems, there are academic clubs and then there’s Quidditch. Oh, there are a few that fall into neither category- Gobstones Club, Chess Society, Puffskein Appreciation Society- but anyone looking for a music club, a drama club, a writing society would be looking for eternity.

Not that it bothers her overmuch- her writing is for her eyes alone, and thanks to Aunt Ann, she has all the extra curricular lessons she could hope for.

(She’s not entirely sure how her Aunt was able to convince Professor Babbling to give her twelve year old niece private instruction in Ancient Runes but she’s terribly grateful that she did- it’s fascinating, and another thing that she suspects she’ll never be entirely able to repay her Aunt for.)

She is aware that she is doubly blessed, in two areas (among others) that Ann is not: she lacks both the hoard of relatives who seem to have nothing better to do than to bully their niece into reliving their own Hogwarts days to the letter, and unlike Ann, she knows her own mind enough to be able to simply disregard the wishes of others when they run contrary to her own.

Ann though ….is not so lucky.

She shows Anne the latest letter from home when they’re tucked away in the depths of the library, cross legged on the floor between the shelves, books and homework spread out before them.

‘I just don’t _want_ to join the Gobstones Club! Or start thinking about trying out for Quidditch next year!’

‘I thought you liked flying?’

‘I _love_ flying- but I don’t want to have to chase a ball or be knocked off my broom in front of everybody….’ Her expression is slightly tortured. ‘They say I have to since I’m here, that I have to _make the most_ of my time here but I don’t _want_ to-’

Anne squeezes her hand in sympathy and goes back to perusing the latest letter.

‘.... _and deeply saddened to hear that you have still not made any effort to put yourself forward; when Elizabeth was in her first year-’_ Anne turns the page over, sees there’s another three paragraphs left in a presumably similar vein and gives it up. ‘Your family owl must be exhausted- this must be, what, the third this week? And it’s only Thursday-’

‘The fourth.’ Ann draws up her knees and lets her head flop forward. ‘I wish I could lie. Except they ask Elizabeth how I’m doing too.’

Anne has rarely been more thankful for the five years between herself and Marian.

‘Why don’t you tell them you’re perfectly happy as you are and to leave you alone?’

‘You make it sound so _simple._ ’

‘It it, though. I could write you another letter?’

(She is rather proud of how quickly Ann’s Cousin James stopped pestering her to ‘lend’ him her allowance after the note she dictated.)

‘I couldn’t send something like that-’

‘You wouldn’t have to _threaten_ them, just politely explain that you don’t need to be told how to spend your time and that you’d appreciate an end to the letters and-’

Ann sighs and gives Anne which she privately thinks of as _Ann’s feeble look_.

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why ever not?’

No answer, but that look again, i makes Anne cross- at Ann’s family but at Ann herself. 

_Have some courage_ , she wants to say, and then inwardly scolds herself for even thinking it: Ann has to face down things every single day and she should be grateful that she isn’t in her place.

She still wishes she could help…. Perhaps she could help Ann placate her relatives, if she won’t let her remonstrate with them. 

_If only she was as good at standing up for herself as she is at art….._

And an idea slowly starts to take root.

_*_

Anne has to do her own research. It’s lucky she’s observant, it’s lucky that she’s always loved to people-watch- but it’s still difficult and after two weeks of nothing, she’s nearly ready to give up.

Then she overhears a muttered conversation between Madame Pince and Professor McGonagal- _‘-ridiculous idea of course- as if Hogwarts needs to take tips from Muggle schools- Albus always said-’ ‘-hard enough to make them concentrate on the subjects they actually need, as if there’s time for non essentials-’ ‘I said Charity, you suggest these things every year and every year-’_

It only takes half a lunchtime of questioning some of the older Slytherins to find out what she needs, and she’s away.

She’s always loved being able to see a plan through.

*

In some ways, Ann (like Anne) finds she is happier at Hogwarts than she was at home. 

(Lessons at home with Aunt Ann are nothing like lessons at Hogwarts for one thing- she doesn’t enjoy them like Anne enjoys them (nobody enjoys study like Anne does) but she does find them interesting. Also, there are cats _everywhere._ And there’s Anne.)

(Unlike Anne, she has yet to be able to say anything much at all to anybody who isn’t her sister or Anne herself and so she keeps this particular thought to herself and meets with no censure.)

She’s happier- even when she doesn’t see Anne for a couple of days, she finds that she feels a frisson of contentment from just knowing that she’s _there,_ somewhere in the castle- but that doesnt mind that she doesn’t find Hogwarts _hard._

Being around strangers every minute is hard, having to share a room is hard (oh how she misses having her own room!), being asked by every Professor if she’s another Walker is just embarrassing, and every potions class is anxiety inducing to the point of pain (she hasn’t incurred the Master’s wrath yet but she lives in fear that she will)- but the hardest thing is having to pretend, _always_ , to be ok.

Her cousins and even Elizabeth usually manage to make her feel even worse about things than she already does on the rare occasions that she makes the mistake of confiding in them, because they react so _strongly_. 

Apparently, she needs to be careful not to get onto the wrong side of the professors, doesn’t she _know_ that they can make your entire time at Hogwarts miserable, doesn’t she know that she has no hope at all of passing her potions OWL if Professor Snape marks her down as a no-hoper? Doesn’t she know that she’s going to get herself a reputation (and not a good one) if she keeps getting lost?

Or- and this is even worse- _who cares what the potions master said? Especially when he wasn’t even speaking to you- stop being so sensitive, you need to stop fretting so much, stop getting into such a state, you’re at Hogwarts now, just stop getting lost, stop being so nervous all the time, just make some friends, join some clubs, just be normal!_

Thank goodness she has Anne to talk to too.

Anne has a way of shrinking things down to their proper size but she’s gentle about it too: she doesn’t tell Ann that she’s pathetic for being so anxious over the prospect of being late to her classes, she doesn’t laugh at her for being afraid of Argus (although she does go to some trouble to demonstrate to Ann that he’s far too lazy to even think of so much as barking, let alone trying to bite anyone).

She doesn’t interrupt- she listens to whatever Ann is telling her (even when it’s hard to understand, even when it’s something silly, even when her voice is wavery with tears) and then she nods decisively (and even that nod on it’s own makes Ann feel better, like now she has Anne on her side to help, then of course things will be alright) and sometimes she considers for a moment (but only a moment) then- just like that- she has a solution.

It’s Anne who suggests that they see if they can draw up some sort of map together to stop them from getting so lost (and the distraction of the project is nice- something to think about, even though it’s Anne who does most of the actual work and Ann who does the drawing part- it’s the one thing she does better than Anne, better than _anybody.)_

(Ann suspects that Anne would perhaps be completely fine without the map, that she only pretends to need it to stop her from feeling foolish- but the thought doesn’t make her feel humiliated as she might have expected. Usually people go to great lengths to make sure Ann knows _exactly_ how much trouble they’re going to on her behalf- Anne’s effort to spare her feelings is as pleasant as it is novel.)

It’s Anne too who asks around until she finds some Ravenclaws who have been tracking the movement of the staircases and although it’s not exact, having some idea of where the different movements will take you and when they’ll occur makes _such_ a difference (and is entirely more helpful than her cousins horror that she has ever found the moving stairs anything less than wonderfully amusing).

It’s Anne who tells her to try having something on hand to focus on when things get too much (when a teacher is shouting or scolding, when the noise of the corridors makes breathing suddenly difficult) and though Elizabeth might raise an eyebrow, though her cousins might laugh outright when they hear what she’s doing, it doesn’t matter: it doesn’t entirely fix everything but her breathing eases slightly when she’s making herself recite lists of dates of Goblin Rebellion’s in her head and the feeling that she’s going to burst into tears abates and goes away.

But most of all, it’s Anne who makes it all bearable by simply existing- with her facts and her stories, with her smile that goes right to her eyes and the way she can make everything into an adventure, the way she makes everything _interesting._ She’s a Cheering Charm, she’s a Pepperup Potion, and somehow (remarkably, wonderfully) she’s chosen _Ann_ to be friends with.

(She wonders- sometimes- why. She wonders- when she can’t stop herself- what Anne actually _gets_ from their friendship- but she’s not brave enough to ask, not willing to risk Anne asking herself that question and coming up without an answer. 

When later- finally just about confident that her wife of five years is, in fact, in it for the long haul- she asks, she is slightly perplexed at the answer. Didn’t everyone look at Anne like she was wonderful? Wouldn’t everybody have listened to her stories, her theories, with rapt attention if they could? Wouldn’t every other student have followed Anne to the library every night if she’d let them and wouldn’t anybody have spoken up immediately to defend her at the first whisper that Anne Lister was _odd_?

Apparently not, according to Anne, though she finds that very hard to believe. And the idea that Ann was somehow _special_ for not wanting Anne to change herself even a particle.... Who on earth would be foolish enough to want her to be _different?_

Mariana did, Anne points out, and Ann tosses her head. Well, everybody knew Mariana was the most idiotic Ravenclaw every to set foot in the castle, worse even than her cousin Harriet, and that was saying something. And off Anne’s amused but uncomprehending look: ‘She wanted you to wear dress robes and give up your extra lessons and….all sorts of things!’ (She can’t believe Anne has forgotten how much time Mariana spent trying to convince Anne to _blend in_ better- nearly the whole time they were together: she didn’t understand it then and she doesn’t understand it any better now, didn’t Mariana _understand_ how lucky she was? 

She’s quite impassioned in her diatribe when she looks up to see Anne watching her with an odd look.

_What_ , she asks, _what is it?_ And Anne shakes her head and then embraces her, kisses her with such fervour that it quite takes Ann’s breath away.)

Anne does more to help Ann than anyone else has done _ever_ , but she also doesn’t hide her opinion that Ann’s cousins need to mind their own business.

(Although she does say once that she has heard that joining clubs can be a good idea and that maybe Ann should think about it.

Ann asks if Anne is seriously suggesting that she goes in for Quidditch, and Anne laughs and says no. 

‘Perhaps you’ll find one you like’, she says, and Ann says that she’s already looked at the prospectus and there’s definitely nothing she likes the look of. 

Anne just smiles.)

A week later she is approached by a friendly-faced woman with flyaway hair who introduces herself as Ms Burbage. 

She teaches Muggle Studies, she explains to Ann- and she often wonders whether Hogwarts shouldn’t take more of a lead from muggle schools in having clubs for things other than magic-related passtimes. She asks if Ann would be interested if an art club happened to be formed- and Ann nods as emphatically as she can.

Pushing open the classroom door on the day of the clubs first session causes little frissons of panic to explode in her stomach- but as it turns out, the anxiety is for nothing.

It turns out no one else at Hogwarts is that interested in art after all.

(So she thinks at the time. It’s only years later that Anne admits to having specifically asked the Professor not to promote the club until Ann has had a chance to settle into it.

‘I didn’t want you to be scared away!’ she explains, and Ann is both incredibly touched and slightly embarrassed to think of how timid she was.

‘Like a mouse’ she says, with only a touch of bitterness.

‘Like a badger’ Anne corrects. ‘Brave but- wary.’

She’s a bit doubtful about how complementary that picture is, but Anne’s kiss distracts her.)

For the first month, it’s just her and Ms Burbage sitting in one of the greenhouses or in Ms Burbage’s classroom and sketching companionably and drinking tea and eating jaffa cakes, while Ms Burbage’s two cats slink around their ankles and pounce at motes of dust. 

Sometimes they talk and Ms Burbage talks about her garden back in Brighton and how she misses the beach, and shows her photographs of the trips she takes during school holidays with her _friend_ (the woman who features in more than half of them is oddly familiar, and it isn’t until Easter that she recognises Professor Sprout.)

She thinks it’s nice to know that teachers can be friends with each other outside of work.)

Ann talks about her classes and her sister and how hard it is to not feel abandoned when Anne starts to slip down to the edge of the forest with Mariana Lawton in the third year (but only when Mariana’s friends are busy, only when no one can see them). 

She gets better at rendering shadows, her perspective get’s better, while she pets Ms Burbage’s cats and learns that Sappho likes to be scratched behind the ears and that Callisto has a predilection for sardines over tuna. 

She sends a sketch of them home (curled together on a stack of parchment) with a note about how much she’s enjoying the art club (and a postscript from Ms Burbage about how Ann is her best student and how they must be _so proud_ \- it’s a compliment but it somehow reads almost aggressively) and she gets sent a box of sugar mice, which she shares with the other students who sit with her to draw and paint and sculpt and trail pieces of string along the floor for the cats to chase: Abdul, who likes doing pen-and-ink sketches, Amanda who prefers watercolours and Stormy, who is even shyer than Ann and who has yet to say a single word.

Sometimes Anne shows up and she reads her Runes textbooks at Ann’s side and eats all the toffees in Ms Burbage’s boxes of Quality Street: she folds the wrappers into tiny swans as she reminds them all, for the hundredth time, that Quality Street were invented in Halifax where her Aunt lives. She can’t draw worth a knut, of course, but Ms Burbage always welcomes her in- just as she does everybody.

(It’s more than that- she and Anne take to one another, and Ann is just happy that the two people she likes most at Hogwarts like one another).

The table gets more crowded with every new student who joins, but Ann thinks it’s nice, how all of them seem to exhale when they enter the shabby little room, how they all seem to lose some of the tension in their faces when they sink down and pick up their brush or pencil.

Sometimes, even Professor Sprout drops in, usually bearing cuttings of something from her greenhouse, which Ms Burbage puts into a vase and sets on the table for them to paint, and Ann thinks again how nice it is that teachers can be friends outside of work.

 _Why_ , she thinks, _with a good friend like that, you might not really mind not having a boyfriend!_

It’s quite a revelation and she smiles as she sketches Sappho bat a stray leaf around the room.

_With a good friend like that, you might not ever even need a boyfriend at all!_

(She resolves to share her thought with Anne as soon as possible. She wonders what Anne will have to say.)


End file.
